[Boatanchors] Beers FM receiver

[Bob Young]

Has anyone here ever heard of the Beers FM receiver? Were any ever made commercially? A friend sent me the following letter and an article that I can send to anyone interested:

Have you ever heard of the Beers FM receiver?  I’m attaching a 1944 article by G.L. Beers, the inventor.   The
Beers circuit used a pentagrid converter as a “frequency-dividing
locked-in oscillator” to produce a new FM signal at one-fifth the first
intermediate frequency, and with one-fifth the frequency deviation of
the incoming signal.  The locked-in oscillator was said to be better at limiting than a conventional
 limiter circuit, and also more selective than several stages coupled by conventional IF transformers.  The
selectivity was the result of the oscillator’s inability to follow
frequency deviations beyond the normal limits of an FM broadcast signal.  When the signal deviated too far, the oscillator would snap back to its resonant frequency.  The
disadvantage of this was that it produced an especially disagreeable
form of distortion, much worse than simple clipping – and this would
probably happen very frequently in those days, considering the thermal
instability of the tube front ends of that era.

Bob 
KB1OKL